Poem with a Fairy Tale, Nesting Hawks and Space
Poem with Hundreds of Flowers
Poem with a Doe and Running in the Park
Poem Beginning with a Couplet from Wang Wei
Poem with a Stanza for Each Tree in My Yard
Away from the Pines for a Week at the Outer Banks
Poem with a Fairy Tale, Nesting Hawks and Space
I remembered today how others would call me Gretel
as soon as they heard your name—Ansil.
The hawks in the nest above our house drop bones
on the front walk. My child picks them up.
The astronaut says of his identical twin: I call him
more from space than I do when I’m home on earth.
What links us, across the miles and years,
the oaks and moss between Virginia and Georgia?
Bond has been written on the kudzu vines.
Fraternity has been coughed up by the hawks.
It is sad how long you must train for space,
to be in space only a few days, says my child.
When I play exploring games with him, I say
leave breadcrumbs so we can find our way back.
The breadcrumbs are always eaten by the birds,
who have no sense, and mean no harm.
The bones the hawks regurgitate are fragile,
like the spine and rib bones of a snake.
In the fairy tale, the mother doesn’t matter
anymore: only the children, only the woods.
I am calling you now from space. I am calling
you more than I do when I’m home on earth.
The phone rocks in its plastic cradle, the long, curled cord
twists around itself, trembles against the wall.
enough of birds
the fig is a false fruit
a hollow-ended stem
filled with hundreds
of inverted flowers
that grow together with the seeds
you thought you ate a fig
from my offering hand
took the fruit from my fingers
love, you ate hundreds
in a single bite
rose-fleshed and honey
a bead of milky sap
at the broken stem
the knife slipping through
the purple door
sweet entrance
Poem with a Doe and Running in the Park
I round the bend and she is there:
looking me in the eyes: her dark ones
to mine, a breathing between us
and as I turn to run over the bridge
she turns as well, and goes into the green
her hooves silent in the soft dirt, her leaf
forgot: harm has made her wary
and noise, the activity of my kind
but she visits like the holy ghost
her presence a pause in violence, doubt—
Iris Murdoch says beauty is a kestrel
flying outside the window: the bird
pulls you out of yourself: you attend
to its fierce and perfect flight;
in this way, beauty stops you
and for one sweet minute you are free
before she turns, leaps into the wood.
Poem Beginning with a Couplet from Wang Wei
After a night of rain
I go out
but the rain
was my watering can
and garden hose
the night before.
I walk the dirt
in sandals.
I remove the sheets,
purple, blue and green
from the tomato
cages, the peppers
the buckets from over
the squash and melon.
I drop clothespins
into my bathrobe pockets.
Every plant has lived
until morning.
The vines and leaves
stand up.
I had a hand in that:
attending the soil.
So do the worms.
So does the rain.
Poem with a Stanza for Each Tree in My Yard
“…it is vacationlike to actually pay attention. Your world is relieved of clutter for a split second.”
–Kay Ryan
Willow Oak
Pin Oak
Peach Oak
Swamp Chestnut oak
Sweet Gum
Hazel Pine
Redgum
Star-leaved Gum
American Storax
Alligatorwood
Bald Cypress
Red Cypress
White Cypress
Gulf Cypress
Swamp Cypress
Tidewater Red-Cypress
Loblolly
Sea Pine
Oldfield Pine
Southern Pine
Frankincense Pine
To know a name
is to open
the world
to what comes
after naming.
Away from the Pines for a Week at the Outer Banks
I wake early the light wakes me the pines have been
by the ocean unfolded, unshaded holding me
out from the wings of I did not know I was for seven years
the pines sleeping in shadow I thought I carried myself
Hannah VanderHart lives in Durham, North Carolina, under the pines. She has poetry, nonfiction and reviews published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, AGNI, The Adroit Journal, RHINO Poetry, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. She is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021), and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Press, 2019), and is the reviews editor at EcoTheo Review. More at: hannahvanderhart.com
